I’m busy baking mini-quiches in expectation of Ian coming over later tonight to record a new episode of the RMNB Podcast. We’ll be talking about the trade deadline, the playoffs, Ovi for Hart, and a lot more, but we need your input.

In January of 2013, Peter and I debuted RMNB’s first (and only) webcomic: Shinny!, a story about a very superstitious 20-something Caps fan named Shinny, her grumpy “Old Time Hockey” dad, and clueless fair-weather fan boyfriend, whose name is Chad.

The comic went on hiatus a year and a half ago, leaving readers with a bit of a cliffhanger: Shinny upset at choosing to bring her boyfriend to a Caps game over her father, and Chad feeling guilty for ruining their trip to the game.

Now, Shinny! is back, and ready to once again bring you some new stories revolving around the world of the Caps, NHL, and the whole wide world of hockey.

The Making RMNB Last campaign has raised more than $22,000 so far– meaning we’re gonna be able to do some cool stuff next year and for years to come. We’ll have some announcements about the specifics, though for now I can tell you that we’ll be making the mobile-friendly website design a top priority in the new year.

We’re blown away by the fact that 590 people have donated already, but we also know that the RMNB family is way bigger than that. Whether you’re a longtime friend-of-the-blog or a brand-new reader, your contribution of any amount (even just $1), will go a long way toward making RMNB even better.

As an added bonus, today is also Ian’s birthday. (It’s not polite to ask how old. He’s old enough.) You can consider your last-minute gift as a sort of birthday present to him, without the shopping and the wrapping and the anxiety over “oh gosh, will he like what I got him?”

If you’ve contributed or are about to, thank you from the bottom of my cold black heart, which might grow three sizes some day soon. Knowing that RMNB (or at least the shirts) matters to you does more than make me feel good about the absurd expenditure of time that we have invested so far; it justifies a continuation and escalation of the sometimes-dumb, sometimes-important, usually-fun stuff that we do here. Get ready.

To celebrate the fundraiser and say thank you, we’re throwing a little party in Frederick on Friday night. If you contributed before Tuesday, you’ve already been notified about it. We’ll send a reminder again early Friday. If you haven’t been contacted but are interested in coming, shoot us an email. It’ll be fun and silly and thoroughly Frederick-y.

Now, I’m gonna answer some questions.

If you contributed at any perk level, we will contact you early next week to ask what size shirt you want. Please respond as quickly as possible so we can get those shirts made and sent to you ASAP. That’s important.

We intend to get every shirt to every US-based contributor before Christmas.We will support shirt sizes from XS up to 4XL. The bigger shirts won’t be the same brand as the others, but they’ll still be great.

If you contributed at the platinum level, I’m gonna have to write an RMNB story about any topic you want. I am absolutely dreading this. We will ask you for your topic next week, but it might take some time before your article makes it onto RMNB. Oh no. I’m scared.

If you shot us an email about a special request, please hit us up again before the end of next week.

First: Thank you. We launched the Making RMNB Last campaign at 10 AM on Monday. By noon we had hit our fundraising goal, and by the end of the work day we had doubled it. As I type this, we’re on the verge of hitting $17,000. To everyone whose donation means that you’ve made RMNB part of your life, thank you for validating all the late hours and thanks for allowing us to do more crazy stuff in the future.

RMNB People: we are just moments into a brand new season. 80 more games and hopefully a few extras lay ahead of us, and we hope to make this journey together. As we disembark, I think it’d be a good idea if we take a moment to get to know each other.

When we think about RMNB, we think of you guys as the crucial ingredient. It’d be kind of weird if you weren’t here, so thanks for hanging out. The whole RMNB should will be down in the comments as well, so let’s party.

Editor’s note: We don’t always get everything right here at RMNB, and we don’t always have the perspective to deal with the criticism we get. For that reason, we’ve asked Eric Fingerhut to act as an independent critic of our work and to keep us honest and accountable. Here comes the RMNB Ombudsman.

Hi, I’m Eric Fingerhut and you may know me from my incessant (some would even say tiresome) criticism of the Washington Post Sports section. I am the new ombudsman at Russian Machine Never Breaks, which means I’ll be providing a monthly critique of the site — as well as hopefully providing a voice for some of the complaints of readers. What are my qualifications for this new post? Well, I’ve been a fan of the Caps since the days of Guy Charron and Bernie Wolfe, I like to write criticism and, most importantly, Peter and Ian asked me if I’d be interested in the position and I said yes.

UPDATE, 11:40 am: I spoke with a representative of Comcast SportsNet Mid-Atlantic who apologized for the oversight. This kind of stuff happens, and CSN is usually pretty good at attribution, so we consider the matter closed. The original post follows.

This isn’t a hockey story, so feel free to skip over this one.

On Monday morning we published a partial translation of an interview by the Russian news agency ITAR-TASS. In that interview, Alex Ovechkin discusses the departure of Mikhail Grabovski and his feelings about Adam Oates’ dismissal from the Capitals. Our own Igor Kleyner translated from the original Russian, and Ian Oland provided the introduction. I did a sloppy proofread on the piece, which will become relevant in a moment.

In just a few hours, your humble blogfather Ian Oland will marry his lady love Ashley. I and much of the stateside RMNB contingent will be there to help celebrate in person (while Fedor stands guard on the draft), but for now it seems appropriate for use this forum and opportunity to say a few words about Ian and Ashley.

Ian: This is the romantic equivalent of the Scott Hartnell-R.J. Umberger trade. Without sacrificing much value at all, you’re adding a ton of character and personality to your team. The experts watching this transaction are baffled at how you managed to pull it off.

Greenberg manually RT’d the news and added, “Oh.” So that’s how you know it’s a big deal.

We’re going through a lot of changes as a blog. For us to figure out what to do next, we need to learn what’s working and what’s not. We’ve put together a short survey– 10 minutes, tops– that’ll help us do exactly that. (Plus, we really wanna settle the Chipotle/Qdoba argument.) If you could, please take a couple minutes to answer some questions for us. We’d really really really appreciate it.